A senior Iranian official has warned the Trump administration against disclosing secret information and documents related to the nuclear deal Tehran signed with the United States and five other world powers in July 2015. “If Trump wants to publish confidential documents between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, it will indeed be an act of violation by the agency, because the agency had pledged not to provide Iran’s secret nuclear information and documents to any country, including America,” said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chairman of Iranian Parliament's Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy. “Publishing secret documents of the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] will undermine confidence in the International Atomic Energy Organization because this international body has been committed to preventing information from leaking.”
Comment: The warning by Boroujerdi comes as the U.S. media reports that the Trump administration is mulling disclosing hidden documents relating to the Iran nuclear deal. The Washington Free Beacon today quotes unnamed sources as saying that “the Trump White House is working on ways to publicize this information despite warnings from Iran.” According to the report, some of these hidden documents are about side deals made between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Organization about Tehran’s ability to enrich uranium, while others relate to inspection of Iranian nuclear sites. While these documents are unclassified, the Obama administration kept them in “tightly-controlled security environments” that restricts public access to them. Tehran is perhaps worried that the publication of documents relating to the side deals will reveal loopholes in the nuclear deal and increase pressure on the Trump administration to renegotiate parts of the accord. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, such as Senators John McCain and Bob Menendez, have called for these documents to be made public.
